


Monster

by SaxSpieler



Series: Verǫld Vǫrðr [17]
Category: Runescape
Genre: Alcohol, Anger, Angst, Gen, Wall-punching, in which both parties say the wrong thing at the wrong time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 23:25:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7409308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaxSpieler/pseuds/SaxSpieler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all too familiar to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

**Author's Note:**

> My answer to the question; “what might make Wahi so angry that he goes all Kindred Spirits on a wall?” Featuring Finley being genuinely petty, angry Wahi, answers to …other… questions, and some alcohol.
> 
> Preface takes place just after the Ritual, the rest takes place after Kindred Spirits. I really need to write something happy now, seeing how dark this one got…

_He returns to his home to find her sitting calmly in his desk chair, waiting for him. Her eyes are red, puffy. She’s been crying._

_It’s only been two weeks, he reminds himself. Give her time._

_“Finley?” He approaches cautiously, remembering what had transpired at the ritual. The woman he thought harmless upon meeting her for the first time had proved to be just as fierce as Fenrir and as ruthless as…_

_Well…_

_Just as ruthless as a Mahjarrat._

_She looks up, and her gaze is distant and tired._

_“Ali. Or, Wahisietel…which should I call you?”_

_He relaxes slightly at her voice. She’s not angry. Not with him, at least._

_“Either will suffice.”_

_“Aye.” She falls silent and stares out the window for a minute before turning back to him. “At the ritual…I blundered. Badly. I was…I didn’t…” Sighing, she buries her face in her hands for a moment and takes a few shuddering breaths. “If you hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be here. So…thank you.”_

_Those last two words are forced, he notices, and he wonders if her attempted assault on Lucien wasn’t meant to be the end of just one life._

_“I…I apologize for my deceptions,” he begins, taking a seat himself. “My reasons are…my own, but I hope you understand that I meant no harm to you. Or Adrius. I hope you can forgive me.”_

_Her only response is a nod._

_The house, though built for only one, now feels strangely empty._

***

From the window, he watches as she makes her way across town.

There’s something off about the way she walks. Her steps are heavy, and it almost appears as if she’s dragging her legs forward, instead of her legs carrying her.

It’s far from the springy, strong stride he’s used to seeing, and he worries the inside of his cheek at the sight.

He opens the door for her before she can knock, wordlessly ushering her inside, and she, equally silent, collapses on the first chair she comes to.

She’s sickly, her skin sallow and almost blotchy in places. A closer look reveals that her face is covered in nearly healed contusions - yellowed rosettes criss-crossed with scabbed scrapes and cuts that might later become scars. As he hands her a glass and pours a nip of whiskey, he notices that her hand trembles, and he steadies it with his own as to not risk spilling any of the alcohol.

She mumbles her thanks as he pours his own nip and sits down nearby.

She’s wearing what looks like a set of platelegs, he notes to himself. Odd, considering she’s not wearing any other armor along with them. They appear to be made of runite and … _crystal?_ … and, if he’s not mistaken, look more like leg bracers than any set of greaves he’s ever seen.

“So,” he begins, having waited until after she’s taken a few sips. “What happened.”

Her response comes as a hiss between clenched teeth, and her eyes, still that vibrant and blinding shade of turquoise despite everything, flash dangerously.

He takes a guess.

“Sliske?”

She nods, taking another sip.

“Tell me.”

Slowly, haltingly, she tells him the story. Her voice is like grinding rocks as she recounts the entire ordeal from the kidnappings, to the trials, to the…

Wahisietel grows cold as she explains, in excruciating detail, exactly what Sliske did to her after his interrupted attempt to extract her soul. Every punch to her jaw and gut. Every time her head was slammed into stone. Every claw that was raked across her cheeks.

Every…

…stomp to her back.

_So that’s what the braces are for._

He’s horrified. But hardly surprised.

The Sliske she had faced in that underground lair - that feral monster - is all too familiar to him.

The glass in her hand, now empty, shatters in her grip as she tells him of Sliske’s threats to her family. How he would cleave her father’s head from his shoulders, how he would skin her sisters alive, how he would hang her brothers’ corpses from Miscellania’s palace walls.

How everyone who had ever brought her joy and happiness would be torn apart, all right before her eyes.

Blood drips from her hand to her trousers, and a broken sob is forced from her chest.

“Why did he do this?” he asks.

“Why does it matter?!?” she nearly shrieks, tossing glass shards across the room. Her hand goes to the desk beside her, and her fingers close around the handle of a paper knife. “Why does it matter what I’ve blundered up this time? I’m broken, Wahisietel! I’ve lost my memories! I can barely walk! I have to wear nappies to keep from messing my britches! I can’t. Feel. ANYTHING!”

The knife descends into her thigh.

She makes no sound, gives no indication of pain aside from the already anguished twist to her face.

Wahisietel drops his glass and stumbles forward with a shout.

“I’m broken,” she huffs as he tugs the knife from her flesh and quickly puts pressure to the wound. “That scunnersome snake broke me.”

He shakes his head, tries to find some comforting words.

“Well, if there’s one thing you can trust about Slisk-”

Her hand shoves him backwards.

“That’s the same bloody thing you said after I told you about Akrisae and Adrius, you dozy bawhead!”

She’s standing, now, her face just inches from his. As she snarls, he can see she’s missing a couple of teeth, no doubt knocked out by Sliske’s fists.

“I came here to tell you that your brother’s little ‘game’ has gone too far this time. He enslaves my husband, kills a god, starts a war, slaughters countless people because he can, paralyzes me from my waist right down to my bloody glakit toes, and then threatens to torture and eviscerate innocent people out of spite!

Your brother is a monster. I _know_ that you know this. So why, _Ali,_ do you do nothing but smile and excuse his actions with jokes?!?”

He stays silent, refusing to wither under the World Guardian’s burning stare.

“WHY?!?”

It’s not that he doesn’t have an answer to her question.

He _could_ answer.

He _should_ answer.

But doing so would only make things worse at the moment. It’s a far more prudent thing to just let Finley’s rage blow over as it always does and then calmly explain everyth-

“Nevermind. I know why. I know why you brush aside everything he does… It’s all just a game to you too, isn’t it? You lied to me. To Adrius. Strung us along for a year and a half to serve your own agenda. You keech-talking _coward.”_

Her hissed accusations pluck at his mind, fraying the already delicate restraints he keeps latched onto the part of him that Finley is _very_ close to meeting.

“That’s why you brush it all off. His lies, his manipulations, his cruelty.”

_No…_

There’s magma in his chest. Bubbling, burning, threatening. His teeth clench.

_Please, Finley. Don’t say it._

“Because to acknowledge all that would be to admit that you’re just as much of a snake as he is.”

_Please._

“You two. You and Sliske. You’re no different from each oth-”

A roar - a caustic, inhuman noise - rattles from his throat.

Finley stumbles backwards, clattering to the floor.

He sees the terror splashed across her face for a split second before he whirls around, drilling his fist into - and through - the wall.

_Liar._

Again.

_Coward._

Again.

_You’re just like him._

And again.

_Just like Sliske._

He assaults the wall until Finley’s voice fades from his mind and he can see the setting sun through the shattered bricks and splintered wood.

Slowly, breathing labored, he turns around, only to be greeted with an empty room. The remnants of recent magic spark in the air - she must have teleported away.

Huffing, he clenches and unclenches his fists, purging the last sparks of rage from the forefront of his mind. He latches that part of him down again, pushing it back and icing it over until it might as well not be there at all.

He berates himself in silence. Rage is unbecoming - he’s better than this.

Better than _him._

_To the void with you, Finley._

Looking up, he catches sight of his spindly, jagged shadow on the far wall, cast there by the sunlight behind him, and he shivers.

 _To the void with_ you, _Wahisietel._

That feral monster.

It’s all too familiar to him.


End file.
